2008 May

As anyone who has heard the hundreds of literary introductions he has given around town over the last decade would suspect, Raymond McDaniel is a poet who revels in the textures of words. Many of his poems focus on the...

Although he sings a traditional kind of jazz, Jimmy Scott's singing is an extreme thing. Most immediately unusual is its range: Scott was born with Kallmann syndrome, which prevented his voice from changing. The voice is...

You could feel the love in the air. And with seventy musicians onstage and 300 people in the audience, that's a whole lot of love on a warm, autumn Sunday afternoon in the Center for the Performing Arts in Dexter High...

Growing Pretty, making its world premiere at the Purple Rose, is a coming-of-age (and going-a-little-past) story of a young artist. Its theme is remarkably underutilized, and the playwright, first-timer Carey Crim, deserves...

Writing music reviews is much like eating oysters. A lot of bands are worth a little hot sauce, but rarely do they offer up a pearl. And then comes Back Forty. This all-white, all-male Michigan band is not just good local...

“?Do You Believe in Jesus I Do!” A rusty found sign sporting this run-on sentence — with its playful punctuation and jaunty hand-painted font — hangs next to a picture of itself in the U-M Museum of Art Off/Site. The...

The name gets your attention, but if it gives you the idea that the Mother Truckers play aggressive roadhouse punk, or country music of the black-and-blues-obsessed 1930s, when "Can't Nobody Truck like Me" was a...

The only time I've seen Trina Hamlin perform live was last summer in Glen Arbor, near Traverse City. It was an outdoor concert on a hot, humid, muggy night, and she walked onstage barefoot. Given the unpredictable nature of...

Like so much else about culture and the arts in Poland, the story of jazz in that country reflects its complex history and politics. Banned during World War II, jazz was driven underground by the new Communist leaders. Only in...